"We’ve built something special in this country, and anyone who threatens it — which Trump does, even if I don’t think his reelection will actually lead to the end of democracy — should be roundly condemned and ostracized. It’s disturbing that this hasn’t happened to Trump."
Threatening democracy: elbowing out any challengers to the Democratic nominee going back to 2016, demanding the House always win. Threatening democracy: subverting the First Amendment and censoring speech via social media. Threatening democracy: jailing your political enemies.
This isn't hard decision for me. The last people who care about democracy are the Democrats.
You are lost, Sasha. I was with you when the Woke Left was running rampant, trying to cancel everything left and right, and when they were relentlessly mean to you during every Oscar season, acting like the world's cattiest middle schoolers. I supported you then and I'd do it again.
But I can't support this. Trumpism is a dark path. You have let these Trumpers twist your mind until now, you've become the very thing you always fought against.
Turn away from it. Put down the Substack. This is not the way. One day you'll understand that.
One of the worst parts of “heterodox” spaces is dealing with those who have their brains broken by the most noxious people on the left and decide to become trumpers as a result. No, I am not obligated to treat brain vomit in good faith (I know at least one moron will show up with such a demand).
It's very hard. Though FWIW I promised myself that if Trump wins, I will approach his term with a more stoic attitude rather than freaking out emotionally all the time like I did the first time. I should also spend less time online in general; it's bad for mental health.
Of course, none of us on the conservative side will admit to having our "brains broken," (if your assumption is true, then of course we couldn't!) but give us the benefit of the doubt that at least parts of our brain still work, even if you can't seem to understand it!
Were I to vote for Trump (and I won't--I'll vote third-party this time, as a statement of rebellion against the two terrible choices we've been given) it would be more of a vote *against* Harris. That's it.
I can't stand Trump the person(ality)--but the things he actually got done in office were things I did agree with. I'm not looking forward to four years of the press's crazed coverage--but they'll complete digging their hole by their absurd coverage of his absurd personality, and that will be sad, but necessary.
Ms. Stone, the examples you give to "threatening democracy" illustrate a kind of fast thinking that a little reflection can correct.
"elbowing out any challengers to the Democratic nominee going back to 2016"
I'm not quite sure what you picture as "elbowing out," but I believe you're simply referring to the unique circumstances of 2024. In 2020 there were many challengers to Biden. As Sanders appeared in a position to outflank others by capturing a plurality in a highly split vote other challengers dropped out to consolidate the vote for a candidate at the center who could command a majority: Biden. Why would you consider this anti-democratic? This is an example of one way that a party committed to democracy works, prioritizing majority sentiment over the crap shoot that can allow a minority to determine the outcome.
"subverting the First Amendment"
As I'm sure you know, the First Amendment, as interpreted by SCOTUS, bars legislatures and government executives from abridging freedom of speech (with certain somewhat well-defined carve-outs for emergency situations). Social media companies are not the government and the First Amendment does not apply to them.
"jailing your political enemies"
Certainly, anyone jailed is detained on the orders of the government. However, to claim they are jailed because they are political enemies rather than because they materially violated the law you need to establish some reason to claim that they did not materially violate the law. In the case of January 6 sentences, they were uniformly meted out because there was overwhelming evidence in every case that involved a jail term that the person involved had be part of a violent attack. On what grounds--other than a political one--could it be argued that they should not receive those sentences? Or are you arguing that those who are political enemies of the Executive should be immune from prosecution? I think you could perhaps construct a case around the brief jailing of Bannon and Navarro, though I wouldn't agree with it, but then you naturally have to deal with the reverse case of pardoning political friends, as Trump did in the cases of Bannon and Flynn.
I'm not trying to convert you. But I'm tired of people on both ends of the political spectrum who use exaggeration, strident rhetoric, and baseless conspiracy theories to mobilize and magnify toxic caricatures and demonization of political adversaries. In my view it is those elements at the extremes that are the adversaries of democracy.
1) She was referring to what happened in 2016, when the Democratic establishment colluded to clear the field for Clinton and then throw the race to her by feeding her debate questions in advance, etc.
2) We have seen a lot of evidence that the government has pressured social media companies to censor the public, both directly and through taxpayer-funded NGO proxies. That is very much a first amendment issue under the state action doctrine.
3) I believe she is referring to the lawfare against Trump, which has been outrageous. Including, but not limited to, Bragg's preposterous case, James' preposterous case, changing the NY sex assault civil statue to allow for 30 year-old evidence-free allegations to fleece Trump for tens of millions, and prosecuting him for classified document mishandling while Biden does the same.
1) You are interpreting "going back to" very charitably. I have no dispute about the 2016 instance, which I agree was improper, but it does not form a pattern with 2024 and does not provide any basis for "the House always wins," as Ms. Stone puts it. If Ms. Stone's point was that the DNC acted improperly in 2016 and therefore the Democratic Party in 2024 is undemocratic I think she has a rather flimsy case.
2) "A lot of evidence" provides none of it. If you want to be specific in a way that would allow analysis that's fine. I'm afraid that NGOs that receive government funding are still free to act independently. Accepting government support does not involve surrendering your First Amendment rights. If an NGO wishes to urge social media companies to restrain speech they don't like it is their First Amendment right, and social media companies can either agree with the underlying reasoning or ignore the NGOs, which they may do without consequences regarding government treatment.
3) I'm afraid that your point relies entirely on your assessment of the cases brought by Bragg and James as "preposterous" (they exposed fraudulent business dealings on a scale that neither you nor I could dream of executing) and creating an equivalence between Biden's transgression and cooperative response in remedying it and Trump's transgression and defiant refusal to cooperate with attempts at concealment in addition. It is the latter elements that have generated the prosecution in the documents case, just as in the case of a driving infraction the government reactions to the original offense and a flight to evade consequences are dramatically different. I notice that you do not mention the Georgia case, where many of us heard egregiously incriminating evidence that was exposed by Republican officeholders in 2020.
The term "lawfare" has been coined by Trump sympathizers with vague definition, for the sole purpose of deploying it without restraint in order to attribute the legal troubles Mr. Trump brought upon himself to the Biden administration, which has actually not had a hand in most of his cases. It is like "fake news," a term that Mr. Trump cannily appropriated after it first emerged in 2016 to characterize videos circulated by Trump supporters supposedly demonstrating voter fraud by the Clinton campaign that were proven themselves to be fraudulent. "Lawfare" is intended to create a pejorative context by its very use, making it more difficult for people to evaluate the actual evidence of the underlying claim. If you want to argue in good faith it would be better to do so without deploying terms that are intrinsically partisan.
Remember also the ruling party's close collaboration with major tech and media companies, to the point of having the White House's own talking points repeated and amplified everywhere as soon as they were dictated. Wasn't that a characteristic of Italian fascism?
"State-Corporate Alliance: In a fascist system, the government and corporations form a close alliance, with the state providing protection and support to corporations in exchange for their loyalty and cooperation."
In a fascist system, the media controlled by the government (which may be all of them) does indeed convey government talking points. But media in democratic countries also generally report those points, as well as the talking points of the opposition (which are generally censored in a strong fascist system).
In a fascist system the government exerts coercive control over the media, both in terms of rewards and threats, to enforce compliance. In a democratic system the government tries to gain favorable coverage through persuasion, as does the opposition.
A fascist system's strength is reflected in the degree to which it has forced unfavorable media outlets to close, and, as an illustration, competing outlets with comparable audiences such as FOX and MSNBC do not co-exist in a fascist state.
Really, I can't tell from your post whether you are thinking of the Biden administration, which can count on favorable, albeit often critical attention from a range of print and broadcast news outlets, while knowing that FOX, OAN, etc., will consistently attack, or whether you're thinking of the Trump administration's relationship with FOX. When Trump threatens to revoke the license of CBS or rails against FOX for airing ads that do not support him I think you see characteristics of fascism that don't appear in the way Democratic administrations and candidates behave. (Imagine the reaction if Harris had threatened to revoke FOX's license!)
There have, of course, been cases of the Biden administration putting pressure on social media not to spread what it regarded as Covid disinformation. That's a good area to look closely and learn lessons for the future, but I don't think it's plausible to say that the motives were primarily political rather than elements of a public emergency response.
Bottom line, I think it is not good reasoning to interpret favorable reporting of government by the media as necessarily or even likely linked to fascism, and the suspicion that it may be should be disprovable by vibrant reporting of the opposition's points by both outlets that seem to favor it and those that seem opposed. To mandate strict neutrality in all reporting would be a violation of the First Amendment; there are instead some "equal time" constraints, which we saw in action just the other day.
As a resident of the American Southwest, I can’t have you besmirching the majestic Jackalope.
“All of this could have been avoided if not for a small group of people close to Biden. I hope the full truth comes out, and I hope they’re not welcome in Democratic politics going forward.”
That small group of people that you hope are cast out of Democratic politics includes the candidate you just voted for, I’m sure you realize this.
This is an election of sheer negative polarization. I really hope the next one includes some positive views for the future of the country.
What path did Kamala Harris have toward becoming a whistleblower, though? If she's made public statements on poor Biden's unfitness, they would've been discounted as a stab-in-the-back attempt to claim the candidacy for herself. The Dems would've not only turned on her, they would've circled their wagons even tighter.
I agree that this was a real coverup. It was egregious! I just don't see how she had any room to maneuver.
She probably *should* have 25th’d him a year ago and then the wagons would have been circling around her, because she’d be the goddamn president.
The support for Biden was there, but clearly brittle, and clearly directed mostly outward, because as soon as a few Democratic insiders stopped being scared of speaking out, it was over for Joe. A real preference cascade. Kamala, if she were smart and savvy, could have kicked off that cascade.
In addition to being good strategy, this has the benefit of being the right thing to do. We’ve had an obviously literally demented man controlling the nuclear button for months, apparently are going to for another couple, and everyone in the world has been acutely aware of this since June.
I've heard this argued about Kamala on a lot of her poor policies. For example, when her office argued to keep nonviolent offenders in prison beyond what the SCOTUS ruled was in violation of the prisoners constitutional rights, I've heard people say "well, she was arguing what the governor wanted her to argue." This is the same thing. If she could see something was wrong and had the power to fix it, but she chose safe inaction... why do we want that person to be president??
Presidents have to make hard decisions, and we want them to make decisions on what is good for the country. In this instance and others, Kamala has made the wrong decision in service of her own political status. We need to stop making excuses for her if she's going to be president.
People rightly laud Mike Pence for putting country before self on Jan 6th but can't conceptualize expecting that of their own candidate. (Obvious Trump did Jan 6th counterpoint)
I'm fine with doing the math and determining that Trump is worse, but you have to be honest about the failures of Kamala Harris.
I agree. I don’t want the party airing its dirty laundry in the heat of the campaign, and no one should demand Kamala take the rap for the party’s worst HR decisions, or expect her to go shouting about them.
Yep, I thought the same thing. Who would have been closer to Biden and his decline than Harris? I agree she shouldn’t be welcome in Democratic politics, but she’s also likely to be the president for the next 4 years.
The fundamental difference between Trump and Harris is that when Trump lies it's obvious bullshit and everyone knows it, but when Harris lies she expects to be believed, and has an entire media ecosystem willing to carry water for her. If you don't know which of those two situations is more dangerous, I don't know what to tell you.
One of the fundamental blindspots in Jesse's thinking here is the apparent notion that a vote for the president is simply that, a vote for the president. If that were the case, then I would not vote for Trump. But that's not the case. A vote for the president is a vote for a whole system, in which the president is only one part. A vote for Harris is a vote for a system full of self-anointed people who believe we're at the end of history, believe they've got access to the Truth, and are impatient with free speech, impatient with all these checks and balances, impatient with the rule of law, and are willing to destroy important parts of our institutions (such as the filibuster) to prevail over the backward, benighted masses. At least if Trump becomes president again the media will gravitate closer to doing their job, even if for the wrong reasons. Jesse's implication that "otherwise reasonable" people are unreasonable in their decision to vote for Trump smacks of the same shortsighted elitism that the anointed above are pushing
Musa al-Gharbi dredged up an Orwell quote about how the leftists of 1930s Europe styled themselves as a "dictatorship of the prigs" -- this rings so true of today's so-called Left and helped create the vaccum that the MAGA movement has filled.
Appreciate your thoughts here Jesse, especially your words about how good we have it here. I broadly share your worries about the implications for democracy of another Trump term. Here’s hoping that 24-48 hours from now we’ve started to put him in our rear view mirror.
Do you remember when democrats despised war mongers like Chaney and Kagan? Do you remember when the Democrats were the party of peace? Do you remember when the Democrats were the party of free speech even to the point of defending the right of American nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois? Do you remember when Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize?
The whole neocon cabal is now welcomed into the democratic party. Democrats have become the party of censorship. Obama set new records for bomb strikes and drone strikes, including killing an American citizen in an extralegal targeted strike and democrats sit on their hands in the face of an internationally recognized genocide.
I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me.
"Nearly everywhere, high prices and the fallout from the pandemic left voters angry and resentful. It discredited ruling parties — and many of them weren’t especially popular at the outset.
This gradually eroded and sometimes shattered trust in government officials, liberal elites and the media. When prices rose, it frustrated millions of younger and low-income voters who saw their savings, purchasing power, housing opportunities and hopes dwindle."
It appears to completely miss that many liberal Americans have noticed that there are currently key Democrat policies which are illiberal, making them worried for our democracy! Some are trying to change the party from within (and not yet succeeding), others are leaving the party with varying destinations.
I won't be voting in the US Presidential election because I'm an Australian.
If I did have a vote, I would vote as follows:
1. If I did not live in a swing state, I would research all the candidates and find a ticket of candidates who either most closely aligned with my own views and values, or who would be the most effective bearers of a message that needed to be heard. In this case I would not be supporting either of the major party tickets.
2. If I lived in a swing state, I would vote for the Harris/Walz ticket, having in mind J K Galbraith's dictum about politics being the art of choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous.
If I may make so bold as to tell the people of another country how their political system should be organised, I think the Electoral College should be replaced by direct election on a one vote, one value basis, and I think that Ranked Choice Voting (or preferential voting as we call it here) should be used instead of simple plurality voting. I also think having US elections run by a body similar to our independent Australian Electoral Commission, rather than by partisan appointees with different rules from one state to the next even in a national election, is worth looking at.
I got distracted, there was something else going on last night...
So- I also think the electoral college accidentally mutes the impact of election fraud. I don't think there's widespread enough fraud to make a difference in presidential elections in our current system, but I think part of that is due to the segmentation/dilution of fraudulent votes. If I cast 1,000 fraudulent Trump votes in New Mexico last night, or if I threw out an entire box of ballots from deep blue Santa Fe county, Kamala Harris still just ended up with 5 electoral votes. I didn't just make up or erase an entire town.
On balance, the electoral college serves the purposes I laid out here and in my other comment while also generally being a representative sample. We had, what, 4 elections in our history where the popular vote and the EC didn't line up perfectly? And as I always argue, the Democrats are a party of change, which makes them the party of unintended consequences. Take away the EC, and watch a brand new Republican get-out-the-vote initiative.
Take a look at the poor souls who are sitting on benches waiting for their same day registration to go through. To a man, those are first time voters voting for Trump. Overconfident lefties think their positions are super popular and just being held back by some institutional dam, but only half the country votes, and Democrats have a much stronger voting culture in their blue pockets. I think they'd be playing with fire.
That's not a principled argument, just a word of caution to smug Democrats when they talk about how obviously bad the EC is.
A lot of Americans agree firmly with your ideas about how to reform the voting system. But any proposal for change will run headlong into a Republican Party that struggles to dominate the popular vote.
Alright, I'll do my best to articulate my reasoning.
1) The electoral college serves to moderate political parties. Maybe not perfectly. But it does favor coalitions instead of 3rd, 4th and 5th parties that only need to win a minority of the vote in order to win the presidency. People like to shit on the 2-party system, and I get that (especially today) but it has its benefits. Everyone loves a Hitler illustration, right? The highest percentage of the vote he ever got was 36.8%. If liberals are standing on principle that they want the president to be elected by the popular vote of the nation, this should probably matter.
2) I think that Democrats are willing to overlook #1 because they think they'll benefit electorally, and I think this is totally misguided. Don't tear down an institution because the results didn't go your way in a weird outlier event or two. (Same goes with court-packing. NPR reports that this court is the most conservative court in 90 years, not that liberals have had control of the courts for 90 years.) I also think that it wouldn't lead to the perceived results. You hear a lot about Wyoming when people complain about unevenly weighted electoral votes, you never hear about DC, RI, VT, etc. You'd also probably activate a lot of Republicans you don't know about in deep blue states who know their votes don't matter much now. They're out there in upstate NY, San Diego, northern California. I'm not sure it's as electorally predictable as everyone thinks.
3) I do actually think it's important to give rural areas a voice, being from a very rural area in a deep blue state, I've seen a microcosm of what it's like to lack representation. Colorado is another great example of Denver passing laws for the rural inhabitants around them- urban voters passing dictates for rural communities tends to go poorly. Let the urban counties pass their own laws to suit their inhabitants. Pennsylvania does this- gun laws are different in Philly than they are in Lebanon County. That's just a personal radicalization from my own "lived experience" though, maybe not a principled one.
“The absolute jackalopes who hid Joe Biden’s decline from the public and pressured journalists and pundits into not talking about it.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesse. Biden should never have run or been allowed to persist in campaigning. Journalists should have been allowed to comment, question, and investigate. That's what put us in this position.
A special spot Is reserved for Karine Jean-Pierre, for reasons best known to her.
What do you mean "we" kemo sabe? Your readers are hardly representative of the left, if my regular reading of the comments here is at all accurate. But you're tired and maybe dispirited, and we all need a break.
(1) You focused on the low-hanging fruit of the Cheney comment, as though the mainstream media hasn't "own goaled" repeatedly and often over the years, to the point of losing all credibility with tens of millions (so that this reader won't subscribe to the NYTimes, unlike conservatives such as Kevin Williamson -- oh, I'll happily read it in our library's reading room; I just won't pay for it).
(2) And you consider Harris a B candidate? How many here would agree? Sure, Plan-B, but not B-quality. Ask your readers. Maybe I'm alone, but she's the first Democratic candidate in my voting life (and I'm 75) whom I just couldn't force myself to vote for. Hell, I'd have voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020 if I'd had to, but along came Joe Biden and I thought "Yes! We'll have a moderate!" Well... But not Kamala, even though she won't wave the keffiyeh for Hamas. Not yet anyway. In any case, my non-vote didn't matter. I live in Indiana, a Republican sanctuary, which Trump will carry easily. I simply boycotted the Presidential race and went all-D down-ballot, in my pathetic effort to help developed real two-party politics. (in California, I'd vote all-R).
One thing: I agree, if Trump wins we'll probably survive it, and I've already made my peace with it. We'll probably even survive if the Dems win the Presidency, the House and the Senate, and thereby the Supreme Court. Probably.
Yeah, Harris as a B candidate is a cope. She didn’t give an interview until 2 months into her campaign, she’s proposed and walked back multiple policies, she’s been so politically illiterate that David Axelrod accused her of falling into word salad.
You can’t vote all-R in Calif, since so many contests are D vs D. But I did my best, and sat out the presidential race.
I liked Sam Harris's final argument for Kamala over at The Free Press—and he almost had me—that it was a vote for normalcy. But just couldn’t pull that lever. The DNC needs to hear a message.
Actually I couldn't effectively vote all-D in Indiana, because in many races there was no Democratic candidate. The real election was the primary last Spring.
"I agree, if Trump wins we'll probably survive it."
I don't know, Prof. Eckberg. People will survive, I suppose (although we 75 year-olds don't have much to expect from that). But I think the norms that have bounded our political lifetimes will not. I believe the MAGA movement has the tools needed to validate Mr. Trump's comment to "his Christians" that this is the last time they will need to vote because he will "fix things." I have come around to agreeing with Gens. Milley and Kelley that Trump is leading a fascist movement (I vocally resisted that term for years, but I can't any longer), and this is something we have never faced before. I do know what the precedents look like. I don't expect to be around when things reassemble after the fall of MAGA if it restored now, but it will not be a change in the realm of politics as usual.
Like you, I'm very concerned about minority representation. I live in a Blue county in the same state as you, and I've never voted a straight ticket because I think freezing Republicans out of local government is a terrible idea on two counts: it will breed extremism on the Right and irresponsibility on the Left. We had one competitive local election here this round and after assuring myself that the Republican was competent and a normal conservative I was happy to vote for him.
I have no problem with Harris. I don't see her as woke, I see her as opportunistic, and opportunism is a political disease that can produce both good and bad results. (Roosevelt ran against Hoover by claiming Hoover was a socialist--Hoover never gets credit for how far he went towards responding effectively to the Crash--then FDR's staff read Keynes's new work and he shifted during the transition. Fine with me. I look for practical results, not ideological purity.) I voted for Harris happily as a run-of-the-mill pol with pretty good flair who will stay to the center to maximize reelection chances. But Trump is a pathological case and his coterie are true believers: Robespierres of the Right (Robespierres of the Left, of which there are plenty, having largely been frozen out by pedestrian Democrats, of which I suppose I am one). If he carries enough of the country to win the EC, I think little will stand in their way to deform the institutions we have relied on for a century and a half, since the Arthur administration, involving a largely meritocratic bureaucracy. (I think Trump is savvy to demonize the "Deep State"--for all its screw-ups and obnoxiousness it is a firewall that protects us all--and I think we will dearly miss it when his 2025 plans blow it up and return us to the spoils system.)
If the Dems win they will, as always, fragment. Not so with the reincarnated GOP, though there may be a battle for the MAGA mantle when Trump goes to his final reward. We'll survive till we die, but I don't think that's the same as surviving a Trump win.
This election balances legitimate concerns about January 6 against legitimate concerns about lawfare against political opponents. Personally, I think Jan. 6 was a product of its time: a crowd primed to riot from watching cities burn for a year; a president on edge from years of fighting spurius and unprecedented challenges to his legitimacy; and the irregular nature of an election during the pandemic. By contrast, if the lawfare is seen as successful, it opens the door to a troubling future of tit for tat.
I am in slight disagreement on the Trump Cheney threat/non-threat. I get it’s tough to parse his rambling. He was on the topic of the military. But that he said she should face down nine barrels, specifically…is weird. That is not a number of guns one would specifically encounter on a battlefield.
I blame the First Amendment zealots who refuse to recognize that the rise of Big Data and social media have smashed their quaint marketplace of ideas. Instead of doing the right thing and advocating for the removal of First Amendment protection from demonstrable lies told in furtherance of political aims, their heads explode at the prospect of distinguishing truth from fiction or the possibility that someday the other side might be making those calls. Oh, the slippery slope! Oh, the humanity!
Well, people are held to account for certain types of lies all the time. Ask Donald Trump, who has been found liable in civil proceedings and criminally guilty recently for telling lies. E. Jean Carroll and her lawyers didn't experience a First Amendment dark knight of the soul when they went after Trump for telling defamatory lies. The judicial system has been doing all the things First Amendment fundamentalists deem impossible for centuries: making reliable findings of fact that don't vary based on who is in power in the White House or State House.
If a butcher can expect the regulators to come down hard on him for selling horse meat as veal, then surely we should be able to craft a cause of action that will shut down Trump and his ilk when their lies harm the body politic as has been the case since at least Trump's birther conspiracy theory.
If the press had been more reliable, instead of going so partisan over the past few years, people would have a reliable source of news. If they had stuck to rigor rather than turning a blind eye to any stories that weren't politically popular, we'd be in a different place today, I think.
Other people would be talking in places, online, etc., but anyone listening to them would know that there were other groups out there with actual standards.
It would be, "oh, you did that because of what you read on "twitter/x".....really???".
One can't stop people lying, but one can try to have places where the lies are fact checked and people know it. I mean really fact checked. Not checked for agreement with a current set of beliefs, which is what has been happening lately in so many areas.
There have been too many important stories over the past five years where the mainstream press has torched its reputation: COVID; Biden's decline; and seemingly half of the stories about Trump that lack context. The only media I am inclined to trust these days are libertarian, people who are so far from power that they have no incentive to carry water for anyone.
It was once the case that you could read a headline, or watch a TV news piece, from a major outlet and trust that you were getting some inkling of what was going on in the world. That's not true know. Almost all such stories have to be approached with suspicion about what facts are being left out (most of the facts within are generally accurate).
I totally agree. There are some in the press that do a good job of actually covering and analyzing the events of the day--but so much of the other coverage is focused on framing things, on swaying things, on putting forth and promoting a narrative (orange man bad! orange man craaaazy!), that it's truly sad. [Can you even imagine if Jesse had written "Brown lady bad" at the end of the post? I know he was having some fun... but just imagine those words being written and the craziness that the Left would devolve into!]
I refuse to be outraged, thanks to the Press. They won't goad me. I won't click. I won't trust them. Let them keep digging their own grave.
Thank you Jesse. A lot of us have felt abandoned by the democratic party. (See Colin Wrights graphic from years ago.) But now, this cohort of smart critical thinkers are supporting a psychopath for president. (See Colin Wright from a few days ago.) I can't wrap my head about it. It was nice to see that you remain a safe harbor of sanity among the heterodox thinkers that have begun smelling their own farts.
I'm trans and I live in Missouri. I'm just ready to stop seeing the attack ads with trans panic rhetoric when I watch the Chiefs beat everyone else. Democrats support sex changes for minors without parental consent, and men competing in women's sports. That's literally what these ads say. Makes me want to scream that the guy who writes about scientific evidence for gender medicine votes Democrat. I fucking hate people.
Kamala Harris, the particular Democrat on the actual ballot, has been on record supporting both and her administration has actively worked to make both more common (via Title IX changes and Rachel Levine’s meddling in WPATH).
I really hate that this has become an issue, and it shouldn’t be a decisive one in a world with a lot of bigger problems, but the facts of the ad, as mean spirited as it may be, are not wrong (or at least, no more wrong than the average as from either side). It’s an own goal from Biden/Harris in pushing extremely unpopular ideology from trans activism into public policy.
Title IX rulemaking is specifically where the administration has affirmed that they intend to legally prevent sports organizations from prohibiting males from participating in women’s sports, which was the second example you gave (and is referenced in the ads you talk about).
Rachel Levine, appointed by this administration, pressured WPATH to remove age guidelines from their recommendations on youth gender surgeries. The administration attempted to walk this back a bit when it was found out, but considering Levine remains in her position, it’s hard to argue that they are particularly opposed to this action.
Neither of these facts are disputable, and in fact have been discussed by Jesse himself.
"We’ve built something special in this country, and anyone who threatens it — which Trump does, even if I don’t think his reelection will actually lead to the end of democracy — should be roundly condemned and ostracized. It’s disturbing that this hasn’t happened to Trump."
Threatening democracy: elbowing out any challengers to the Democratic nominee going back to 2016, demanding the House always win. Threatening democracy: subverting the First Amendment and censoring speech via social media. Threatening democracy: jailing your political enemies.
This isn't hard decision for me. The last people who care about democracy are the Democrats.
Geez, put down the FOX/OAN crackpipe!
You are lost, Sasha. I was with you when the Woke Left was running rampant, trying to cancel everything left and right, and when they were relentlessly mean to you during every Oscar season, acting like the world's cattiest middle schoolers. I supported you then and I'd do it again.
But I can't support this. Trumpism is a dark path. You have let these Trumpers twist your mind until now, you've become the very thing you always fought against.
Turn away from it. Put down the Substack. This is not the way. One day you'll understand that.
One of the worst parts of “heterodox” spaces is dealing with those who have their brains broken by the most noxious people on the left and decide to become trumpers as a result. No, I am not obligated to treat brain vomit in good faith (I know at least one moron will show up with such a demand).
It's very hard. Though FWIW I promised myself that if Trump wins, I will approach his term with a more stoic attitude rather than freaking out emotionally all the time like I did the first time. I should also spend less time online in general; it's bad for mental health.
Of course, none of us on the conservative side will admit to having our "brains broken," (if your assumption is true, then of course we couldn't!) but give us the benefit of the doubt that at least parts of our brain still work, even if you can't seem to understand it!
Were I to vote for Trump (and I won't--I'll vote third-party this time, as a statement of rebellion against the two terrible choices we've been given) it would be more of a vote *against* Harris. That's it.
I can't stand Trump the person(ality)--but the things he actually got done in office were things I did agree with. I'm not looking forward to four years of the press's crazed coverage--but they'll complete digging their hole by their absurd coverage of his absurd personality, and that will be sad, but necessary.
Perfectly stated and so utterly, profoundly true. Looking at you specifically Matt Taibbi.
Ms. Stone, the examples you give to "threatening democracy" illustrate a kind of fast thinking that a little reflection can correct.
"elbowing out any challengers to the Democratic nominee going back to 2016"
I'm not quite sure what you picture as "elbowing out," but I believe you're simply referring to the unique circumstances of 2024. In 2020 there were many challengers to Biden. As Sanders appeared in a position to outflank others by capturing a plurality in a highly split vote other challengers dropped out to consolidate the vote for a candidate at the center who could command a majority: Biden. Why would you consider this anti-democratic? This is an example of one way that a party committed to democracy works, prioritizing majority sentiment over the crap shoot that can allow a minority to determine the outcome.
"subverting the First Amendment"
As I'm sure you know, the First Amendment, as interpreted by SCOTUS, bars legislatures and government executives from abridging freedom of speech (with certain somewhat well-defined carve-outs for emergency situations). Social media companies are not the government and the First Amendment does not apply to them.
"jailing your political enemies"
Certainly, anyone jailed is detained on the orders of the government. However, to claim they are jailed because they are political enemies rather than because they materially violated the law you need to establish some reason to claim that they did not materially violate the law. In the case of January 6 sentences, they were uniformly meted out because there was overwhelming evidence in every case that involved a jail term that the person involved had be part of a violent attack. On what grounds--other than a political one--could it be argued that they should not receive those sentences? Or are you arguing that those who are political enemies of the Executive should be immune from prosecution? I think you could perhaps construct a case around the brief jailing of Bannon and Navarro, though I wouldn't agree with it, but then you naturally have to deal with the reverse case of pardoning political friends, as Trump did in the cases of Bannon and Flynn.
I'm not trying to convert you. But I'm tired of people on both ends of the political spectrum who use exaggeration, strident rhetoric, and baseless conspiracy theories to mobilize and magnify toxic caricatures and demonization of political adversaries. In my view it is those elements at the extremes that are the adversaries of democracy.
Point by point:
1) She was referring to what happened in 2016, when the Democratic establishment colluded to clear the field for Clinton and then throw the race to her by feeding her debate questions in advance, etc.
2) We have seen a lot of evidence that the government has pressured social media companies to censor the public, both directly and through taxpayer-funded NGO proxies. That is very much a first amendment issue under the state action doctrine.
3) I believe she is referring to the lawfare against Trump, which has been outrageous. Including, but not limited to, Bragg's preposterous case, James' preposterous case, changing the NY sex assault civil statue to allow for 30 year-old evidence-free allegations to fleece Trump for tens of millions, and prosecuting him for classified document mishandling while Biden does the same.
Unset, I'll respond point by point:
1) You are interpreting "going back to" very charitably. I have no dispute about the 2016 instance, which I agree was improper, but it does not form a pattern with 2024 and does not provide any basis for "the House always wins," as Ms. Stone puts it. If Ms. Stone's point was that the DNC acted improperly in 2016 and therefore the Democratic Party in 2024 is undemocratic I think she has a rather flimsy case.
2) "A lot of evidence" provides none of it. If you want to be specific in a way that would allow analysis that's fine. I'm afraid that NGOs that receive government funding are still free to act independently. Accepting government support does not involve surrendering your First Amendment rights. If an NGO wishes to urge social media companies to restrain speech they don't like it is their First Amendment right, and social media companies can either agree with the underlying reasoning or ignore the NGOs, which they may do without consequences regarding government treatment.
3) I'm afraid that your point relies entirely on your assessment of the cases brought by Bragg and James as "preposterous" (they exposed fraudulent business dealings on a scale that neither you nor I could dream of executing) and creating an equivalence between Biden's transgression and cooperative response in remedying it and Trump's transgression and defiant refusal to cooperate with attempts at concealment in addition. It is the latter elements that have generated the prosecution in the documents case, just as in the case of a driving infraction the government reactions to the original offense and a flight to evade consequences are dramatically different. I notice that you do not mention the Georgia case, where many of us heard egregiously incriminating evidence that was exposed by Republican officeholders in 2020.
The term "lawfare" has been coined by Trump sympathizers with vague definition, for the sole purpose of deploying it without restraint in order to attribute the legal troubles Mr. Trump brought upon himself to the Biden administration, which has actually not had a hand in most of his cases. It is like "fake news," a term that Mr. Trump cannily appropriated after it first emerged in 2016 to characterize videos circulated by Trump supporters supposedly demonstrating voter fraud by the Clinton campaign that were proven themselves to be fraudulent. "Lawfare" is intended to create a pejorative context by its very use, making it more difficult for people to evaluate the actual evidence of the underlying claim. If you want to argue in good faith it would be better to do so without deploying terms that are intrinsically partisan.
Remember also the ruling party's close collaboration with major tech and media companies, to the point of having the White House's own talking points repeated and amplified everywhere as soon as they were dictated. Wasn't that a characteristic of Italian fascism?
"State-Corporate Alliance: In a fascist system, the government and corporations form a close alliance, with the state providing protection and support to corporations in exchange for their loyalty and cooperation."
Interesting point, DG.
In a fascist system, the media controlled by the government (which may be all of them) does indeed convey government talking points. But media in democratic countries also generally report those points, as well as the talking points of the opposition (which are generally censored in a strong fascist system).
In a fascist system the government exerts coercive control over the media, both in terms of rewards and threats, to enforce compliance. In a democratic system the government tries to gain favorable coverage through persuasion, as does the opposition.
A fascist system's strength is reflected in the degree to which it has forced unfavorable media outlets to close, and, as an illustration, competing outlets with comparable audiences such as FOX and MSNBC do not co-exist in a fascist state.
Really, I can't tell from your post whether you are thinking of the Biden administration, which can count on favorable, albeit often critical attention from a range of print and broadcast news outlets, while knowing that FOX, OAN, etc., will consistently attack, or whether you're thinking of the Trump administration's relationship with FOX. When Trump threatens to revoke the license of CBS or rails against FOX for airing ads that do not support him I think you see characteristics of fascism that don't appear in the way Democratic administrations and candidates behave. (Imagine the reaction if Harris had threatened to revoke FOX's license!)
There have, of course, been cases of the Biden administration putting pressure on social media not to spread what it regarded as Covid disinformation. That's a good area to look closely and learn lessons for the future, but I don't think it's plausible to say that the motives were primarily political rather than elements of a public emergency response.
Bottom line, I think it is not good reasoning to interpret favorable reporting of government by the media as necessarily or even likely linked to fascism, and the suspicion that it may be should be disprovable by vibrant reporting of the opposition's points by both outlets that seem to favor it and those that seem opposed. To mandate strict neutrality in all reporting would be a violation of the First Amendment; there are instead some "equal time" constraints, which we saw in action just the other day.
As a resident of the American Southwest, I can’t have you besmirching the majestic Jackalope.
“All of this could have been avoided if not for a small group of people close to Biden. I hope the full truth comes out, and I hope they’re not welcome in Democratic politics going forward.”
That small group of people that you hope are cast out of Democratic politics includes the candidate you just voted for, I’m sure you realize this.
This is an election of sheer negative polarization. I really hope the next one includes some positive views for the future of the country.
What path did Kamala Harris have toward becoming a whistleblower, though? If she's made public statements on poor Biden's unfitness, they would've been discounted as a stab-in-the-back attempt to claim the candidacy for herself. The Dems would've not only turned on her, they would've circled their wagons even tighter.
I agree that this was a real coverup. It was egregious! I just don't see how she had any room to maneuver.
It wasn’t exactly a sin of omission. She was one of the leading counter-offenders against Robert Hur.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/09/biden-hur-special-counsel-harris-00140744
She probably *should* have 25th’d him a year ago and then the wagons would have been circling around her, because she’d be the goddamn president.
The support for Biden was there, but clearly brittle, and clearly directed mostly outward, because as soon as a few Democratic insiders stopped being scared of speaking out, it was over for Joe. A real preference cascade. Kamala, if she were smart and savvy, could have kicked off that cascade.
In addition to being good strategy, this has the benefit of being the right thing to do. We’ve had an obviously literally demented man controlling the nuclear button for months, apparently are going to for another couple, and everyone in the world has been acutely aware of this since June.
I've heard this argued about Kamala on a lot of her poor policies. For example, when her office argued to keep nonviolent offenders in prison beyond what the SCOTUS ruled was in violation of the prisoners constitutional rights, I've heard people say "well, she was arguing what the governor wanted her to argue." This is the same thing. If she could see something was wrong and had the power to fix it, but she chose safe inaction... why do we want that person to be president??
Presidents have to make hard decisions, and we want them to make decisions on what is good for the country. In this instance and others, Kamala has made the wrong decision in service of her own political status. We need to stop making excuses for her if she's going to be president.
People rightly laud Mike Pence for putting country before self on Jan 6th but can't conceptualize expecting that of their own candidate. (Obvious Trump did Jan 6th counterpoint)
I'm fine with doing the math and determining that Trump is worse, but you have to be honest about the failures of Kamala Harris.
I agree. I don’t want the party airing its dirty laundry in the heat of the campaign, and no one should demand Kamala take the rap for the party’s worst HR decisions, or expect her to go shouting about them.
Yep, I thought the same thing. Who would have been closer to Biden and his decline than Harris? I agree she shouldn’t be welcome in Democratic politics, but she’s also likely to be the president for the next 4 years.
The fundamental difference between Trump and Harris is that when Trump lies it's obvious bullshit and everyone knows it, but when Harris lies she expects to be believed, and has an entire media ecosystem willing to carry water for her. If you don't know which of those two situations is more dangerous, I don't know what to tell you.
One of the fundamental blindspots in Jesse's thinking here is the apparent notion that a vote for the president is simply that, a vote for the president. If that were the case, then I would not vote for Trump. But that's not the case. A vote for the president is a vote for a whole system, in which the president is only one part. A vote for Harris is a vote for a system full of self-anointed people who believe we're at the end of history, believe they've got access to the Truth, and are impatient with free speech, impatient with all these checks and balances, impatient with the rule of law, and are willing to destroy important parts of our institutions (such as the filibuster) to prevail over the backward, benighted masses. At least if Trump becomes president again the media will gravitate closer to doing their job, even if for the wrong reasons. Jesse's implication that "otherwise reasonable" people are unreasonable in their decision to vote for Trump smacks of the same shortsighted elitism that the anointed above are pushing
Musa al-Gharbi dredged up an Orwell quote about how the leftists of 1930s Europe styled themselves as a "dictatorship of the prigs" -- this rings so true of today's so-called Left and helped create the vaccum that the MAGA movement has filled.
Appreciate your thoughts here Jesse, especially your words about how good we have it here. I broadly share your worries about the implications for democracy of another Trump term. Here’s hoping that 24-48 hours from now we’ve started to put him in our rear view mirror.
Do you remember when democrats despised war mongers like Chaney and Kagan? Do you remember when the Democrats were the party of peace? Do you remember when the Democrats were the party of free speech even to the point of defending the right of American nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois? Do you remember when Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize?
The whole neocon cabal is now welcomed into the democratic party. Democrats have become the party of censorship. Obama set new records for bomb strikes and drone strikes, including killing an American citizen in an extralegal targeted strike and democrats sit on their hands in the face of an internationally recognized genocide.
I didn't leave the Democratic party, the party left me.
Thank you!!
I found the NYT description of how the left and right have evolved....very confused.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/upshot/democrats-trump-election.html
"Nearly everywhere, high prices and the fallout from the pandemic left voters angry and resentful. It discredited ruling parties — and many of them weren’t especially popular at the outset.
This gradually eroded and sometimes shattered trust in government officials, liberal elites and the media. When prices rose, it frustrated millions of younger and low-income voters who saw their savings, purchasing power, housing opportunities and hopes dwindle."
It appears to completely miss that many liberal Americans have noticed that there are currently key Democrat policies which are illiberal, making them worried for our democracy! Some are trying to change the party from within (and not yet succeeding), others are leaving the party with varying destinations.
I won't be voting in the US Presidential election because I'm an Australian.
If I did have a vote, I would vote as follows:
1. If I did not live in a swing state, I would research all the candidates and find a ticket of candidates who either most closely aligned with my own views and values, or who would be the most effective bearers of a message that needed to be heard. In this case I would not be supporting either of the major party tickets.
2. If I lived in a swing state, I would vote for the Harris/Walz ticket, having in mind J K Galbraith's dictum about politics being the art of choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous.
If I may make so bold as to tell the people of another country how their political system should be organised, I think the Electoral College should be replaced by direct election on a one vote, one value basis, and I think that Ranked Choice Voting (or preferential voting as we call it here) should be used instead of simple plurality voting. I also think having US elections run by a body similar to our independent Australian Electoral Commission, rather than by partisan appointees with different rules from one state to the next even in a national election, is worth looking at.
I’m unpopular these days because I think the electoral college is a good thing.
Would love to hear you out on this if you have time. You can direct me to other writings you've already done on this if any exist.
Nvm, I didn't see your long post below this until just now.
I have more, lol. I’ll send you stuff when I’m back from the polls if you want.
Yup, would love to read it!
I got distracted, there was something else going on last night...
So- I also think the electoral college accidentally mutes the impact of election fraud. I don't think there's widespread enough fraud to make a difference in presidential elections in our current system, but I think part of that is due to the segmentation/dilution of fraudulent votes. If I cast 1,000 fraudulent Trump votes in New Mexico last night, or if I threw out an entire box of ballots from deep blue Santa Fe county, Kamala Harris still just ended up with 5 electoral votes. I didn't just make up or erase an entire town.
On balance, the electoral college serves the purposes I laid out here and in my other comment while also generally being a representative sample. We had, what, 4 elections in our history where the popular vote and the EC didn't line up perfectly? And as I always argue, the Democrats are a party of change, which makes them the party of unintended consequences. Take away the EC, and watch a brand new Republican get-out-the-vote initiative.
Take a look at the poor souls who are sitting on benches waiting for their same day registration to go through. To a man, those are first time voters voting for Trump. Overconfident lefties think their positions are super popular and just being held back by some institutional dam, but only half the country votes, and Democrats have a much stronger voting culture in their blue pockets. I think they'd be playing with fire.
That's not a principled argument, just a word of caution to smug Democrats when they talk about how obviously bad the EC is.
A lot of Americans agree firmly with your ideas about how to reform the voting system. But any proposal for change will run headlong into a Republican Party that struggles to dominate the popular vote.
It will just take an election where a Republican loses the electoral college and wins the popular vote....
Yeah, the think-pieces will start changing. I doubt the consternation over the electoral college is a principled one for most people.
The arguments I have heard against it are essentially:
1. Then Republicans wouldn’t ever win anything
2. Then every election would just go the way “California” wants it (discounting that all states voting as a block would become a thing of the past).
It’s not principles.
Alright, I'll do my best to articulate my reasoning.
1) The electoral college serves to moderate political parties. Maybe not perfectly. But it does favor coalitions instead of 3rd, 4th and 5th parties that only need to win a minority of the vote in order to win the presidency. People like to shit on the 2-party system, and I get that (especially today) but it has its benefits. Everyone loves a Hitler illustration, right? The highest percentage of the vote he ever got was 36.8%. If liberals are standing on principle that they want the president to be elected by the popular vote of the nation, this should probably matter.
2) I think that Democrats are willing to overlook #1 because they think they'll benefit electorally, and I think this is totally misguided. Don't tear down an institution because the results didn't go your way in a weird outlier event or two. (Same goes with court-packing. NPR reports that this court is the most conservative court in 90 years, not that liberals have had control of the courts for 90 years.) I also think that it wouldn't lead to the perceived results. You hear a lot about Wyoming when people complain about unevenly weighted electoral votes, you never hear about DC, RI, VT, etc. You'd also probably activate a lot of Republicans you don't know about in deep blue states who know their votes don't matter much now. They're out there in upstate NY, San Diego, northern California. I'm not sure it's as electorally predictable as everyone thinks.
3) I do actually think it's important to give rural areas a voice, being from a very rural area in a deep blue state, I've seen a microcosm of what it's like to lack representation. Colorado is another great example of Denver passing laws for the rural inhabitants around them- urban voters passing dictates for rural communities tends to go poorly. Let the urban counties pass their own laws to suit their inhabitants. Pennsylvania does this- gun laws are different in Philly than they are in Lebanon County. That's just a personal radicalization from my own "lived experience" though, maybe not a principled one.
“The absolute jackalopes who hid Joe Biden’s decline from the public and pressured journalists and pundits into not talking about it.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesse. Biden should never have run or been allowed to persist in campaigning. Journalists should have been allowed to comment, question, and investigate. That's what put us in this position.
A special spot Is reserved for Karine Jean-Pierre, for reasons best known to her.
What do you mean "we" kemo sabe? Your readers are hardly representative of the left, if my regular reading of the comments here is at all accurate. But you're tired and maybe dispirited, and we all need a break.
(1) You focused on the low-hanging fruit of the Cheney comment, as though the mainstream media hasn't "own goaled" repeatedly and often over the years, to the point of losing all credibility with tens of millions (so that this reader won't subscribe to the NYTimes, unlike conservatives such as Kevin Williamson -- oh, I'll happily read it in our library's reading room; I just won't pay for it).
(2) And you consider Harris a B candidate? How many here would agree? Sure, Plan-B, but not B-quality. Ask your readers. Maybe I'm alone, but she's the first Democratic candidate in my voting life (and I'm 75) whom I just couldn't force myself to vote for. Hell, I'd have voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020 if I'd had to, but along came Joe Biden and I thought "Yes! We'll have a moderate!" Well... But not Kamala, even though she won't wave the keffiyeh for Hamas. Not yet anyway. In any case, my non-vote didn't matter. I live in Indiana, a Republican sanctuary, which Trump will carry easily. I simply boycotted the Presidential race and went all-D down-ballot, in my pathetic effort to help developed real two-party politics. (in California, I'd vote all-R).
One thing: I agree, if Trump wins we'll probably survive it, and I've already made my peace with it. We'll probably even survive if the Dems win the Presidency, the House and the Senate, and thereby the Supreme Court. Probably.
Yeah, Harris as a B candidate is a cope. She didn’t give an interview until 2 months into her campaign, she’s proposed and walked back multiple policies, she’s been so politically illiterate that David Axelrod accused her of falling into word salad.
And what about those emails?
You can’t vote all-R in Calif, since so many contests are D vs D. But I did my best, and sat out the presidential race.
I liked Sam Harris's final argument for Kamala over at The Free Press—and he almost had me—that it was a vote for normalcy. But just couldn’t pull that lever. The DNC needs to hear a message.
Actually I couldn't effectively vote all-D in Indiana, because in many races there was no Democratic candidate. The real election was the primary last Spring.
Did you? I found that to be a poor showing for Sam Harris.
"I agree, if Trump wins we'll probably survive it."
I don't know, Prof. Eckberg. People will survive, I suppose (although we 75 year-olds don't have much to expect from that). But I think the norms that have bounded our political lifetimes will not. I believe the MAGA movement has the tools needed to validate Mr. Trump's comment to "his Christians" that this is the last time they will need to vote because he will "fix things." I have come around to agreeing with Gens. Milley and Kelley that Trump is leading a fascist movement (I vocally resisted that term for years, but I can't any longer), and this is something we have never faced before. I do know what the precedents look like. I don't expect to be around when things reassemble after the fall of MAGA if it restored now, but it will not be a change in the realm of politics as usual.
Like you, I'm very concerned about minority representation. I live in a Blue county in the same state as you, and I've never voted a straight ticket because I think freezing Republicans out of local government is a terrible idea on two counts: it will breed extremism on the Right and irresponsibility on the Left. We had one competitive local election here this round and after assuring myself that the Republican was competent and a normal conservative I was happy to vote for him.
I have no problem with Harris. I don't see her as woke, I see her as opportunistic, and opportunism is a political disease that can produce both good and bad results. (Roosevelt ran against Hoover by claiming Hoover was a socialist--Hoover never gets credit for how far he went towards responding effectively to the Crash--then FDR's staff read Keynes's new work and he shifted during the transition. Fine with me. I look for practical results, not ideological purity.) I voted for Harris happily as a run-of-the-mill pol with pretty good flair who will stay to the center to maximize reelection chances. But Trump is a pathological case and his coterie are true believers: Robespierres of the Right (Robespierres of the Left, of which there are plenty, having largely been frozen out by pedestrian Democrats, of which I suppose I am one). If he carries enough of the country to win the EC, I think little will stand in their way to deform the institutions we have relied on for a century and a half, since the Arthur administration, involving a largely meritocratic bureaucracy. (I think Trump is savvy to demonize the "Deep State"--for all its screw-ups and obnoxiousness it is a firewall that protects us all--and I think we will dearly miss it when his 2025 plans blow it up and return us to the spoils system.)
If the Dems win they will, as always, fragment. Not so with the reincarnated GOP, though there may be a battle for the MAGA mantle when Trump goes to his final reward. We'll survive till we die, but I don't think that's the same as surviving a Trump win.
This election balances legitimate concerns about January 6 against legitimate concerns about lawfare against political opponents. Personally, I think Jan. 6 was a product of its time: a crowd primed to riot from watching cities burn for a year; a president on edge from years of fighting spurius and unprecedented challenges to his legitimacy; and the irregular nature of an election during the pandemic. By contrast, if the lawfare is seen as successful, it opens the door to a troubling future of tit for tat.
I am in slight disagreement on the Trump Cheney threat/non-threat. I get it’s tough to parse his rambling. He was on the topic of the military. But that he said she should face down nine barrels, specifically…is weird. That is not a number of guns one would specifically encounter on a battlefield.
Damn right it was a threat. Since when has a mob boss ever had to paint a picture to his underlings when he wanted them to commit crimes?
I blame the First Amendment zealots who refuse to recognize that the rise of Big Data and social media have smashed their quaint marketplace of ideas. Instead of doing the right thing and advocating for the removal of First Amendment protection from demonstrable lies told in furtherance of political aims, their heads explode at the prospect of distinguishing truth from fiction or the possibility that someday the other side might be making those calls. Oh, the slippery slope! Oh, the humanity!
Well, people are held to account for certain types of lies all the time. Ask Donald Trump, who has been found liable in civil proceedings and criminally guilty recently for telling lies. E. Jean Carroll and her lawyers didn't experience a First Amendment dark knight of the soul when they went after Trump for telling defamatory lies. The judicial system has been doing all the things First Amendment fundamentalists deem impossible for centuries: making reliable findings of fact that don't vary based on who is in power in the White House or State House.
If a butcher can expect the regulators to come down hard on him for selling horse meat as veal, then surely we should be able to craft a cause of action that will shut down Trump and his ilk when their lies harm the body politic as has been the case since at least Trump's birther conspiracy theory.
I actually blame the press.
If the press had been more reliable, instead of going so partisan over the past few years, people would have a reliable source of news. If they had stuck to rigor rather than turning a blind eye to any stories that weren't politically popular, we'd be in a different place today, I think.
Other people would be talking in places, online, etc., but anyone listening to them would know that there were other groups out there with actual standards.
It would be, "oh, you did that because of what you read on "twitter/x".....really???".
One can't stop people lying, but one can try to have places where the lies are fact checked and people know it. I mean really fact checked. Not checked for agreement with a current set of beliefs, which is what has been happening lately in so many areas.
There have been too many important stories over the past five years where the mainstream press has torched its reputation: COVID; Biden's decline; and seemingly half of the stories about Trump that lack context. The only media I am inclined to trust these days are libertarian, people who are so far from power that they have no incentive to carry water for anyone.
It was once the case that you could read a headline, or watch a TV news piece, from a major outlet and trust that you were getting some inkling of what was going on in the world. That's not true know. Almost all such stories have to be approached with suspicion about what facts are being left out (most of the facts within are generally accurate).
Maybe that's all for the best, but it is a pain.
I totally agree. There are some in the press that do a good job of actually covering and analyzing the events of the day--but so much of the other coverage is focused on framing things, on swaying things, on putting forth and promoting a narrative (orange man bad! orange man craaaazy!), that it's truly sad. [Can you even imagine if Jesse had written "Brown lady bad" at the end of the post? I know he was having some fun... but just imagine those words being written and the craziness that the Left would devolve into!]
I refuse to be outraged, thanks to the Press. They won't goad me. I won't click. I won't trust them. Let them keep digging their own grave.
Drunk at the airport in Honolulu, but I feel you Bro.🤙 What he said.
Thank you Jesse. A lot of us have felt abandoned by the democratic party. (See Colin Wrights graphic from years ago.) But now, this cohort of smart critical thinkers are supporting a psychopath for president. (See Colin Wright from a few days ago.) I can't wrap my head about it. It was nice to see that you remain a safe harbor of sanity among the heterodox thinkers that have begun smelling their own farts.
I'm trans and I live in Missouri. I'm just ready to stop seeing the attack ads with trans panic rhetoric when I watch the Chiefs beat everyone else. Democrats support sex changes for minors without parental consent, and men competing in women's sports. That's literally what these ads say. Makes me want to scream that the guy who writes about scientific evidence for gender medicine votes Democrat. I fucking hate people.
Kamala Harris, the particular Democrat on the actual ballot, has been on record supporting both and her administration has actively worked to make both more common (via Title IX changes and Rachel Levine’s meddling in WPATH).
I really hate that this has become an issue, and it shouldn’t be a decisive one in a world with a lot of bigger problems, but the facts of the ad, as mean spirited as it may be, are not wrong (or at least, no more wrong than the average as from either side). It’s an own goal from Biden/Harris in pushing extremely unpopular ideology from trans activism into public policy.
So you will believe anything.
I didn’t realize the publicly available information about Title IX was something that required “belief”.
You believe Kamala Harris supports sex changes for minors, saying Title IX doesn't make you sound smart after that.
Title IX rulemaking is specifically where the administration has affirmed that they intend to legally prevent sports organizations from prohibiting males from participating in women’s sports, which was the second example you gave (and is referenced in the ads you talk about).
Rachel Levine, appointed by this administration, pressured WPATH to remove age guidelines from their recommendations on youth gender surgeries. The administration attempted to walk this back a bit when it was found out, but considering Levine remains in her position, it’s hard to argue that they are particularly opposed to this action.
Neither of these facts are disputable, and in fact have been discussed by Jesse himself.